Xref: utzoo news.admin:15399 news.software.b:8370 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!caen!spool.mu.edu!olivea!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: Date: 20 Jun 91 16:03:06 GMT References: <1991Jun19.040304.6183@kithrup.COM> Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK. Lines: 31 sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: > In article mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a * > >No, the purpose of the news transport software is to correctly transmit the > >news articles which it receives. > > The articles in question were not news articles. They did not meet the test > for news articles (RFC's of various sorts), therefore, if C News did not > transmit them, it was not failing its purpose. Well, if you want to take that attitude, then from a pedantic viewpoint I suppose you're right. However, I maintain that it's not a very helpful attitude. It's much better to say "This is a news article, but it's badly formatted". Compilers don't just say "This isn't a C program" and silently delete the input; they give some useful information to the person who can correct the error. Even if you decide that articles not strictly RFC-conformant are not news articles, that does not remove all responsibility for reporting errors when such articles are encountered. I don't care how excessively pedantic C News is, so long as it reports its errors to someone who can do something about it. > But I wouldn't expect you to understand or agree. Of course you wouldn't, since you probably aren't listening to what I'm saying. mathew